


then you are a comrade of mine

by postcardmystery



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 14:10:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1553213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/pseuds/postcardmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In celebration of International Worker's Day: the golden trinity, communism, and where they have intersected throughout history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	then you are a comrade of mine

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for blood, war, death, and what, by contemporary standards, may be judged 'terrorism'.

i. _The Paris Commune_

“I am nobody, and every man you have killed today, and I will not tell you my name, for you shall only call me by it,” says the man on his knees. He spits blood out of his mouth, dangles it from his lip in a long string, red as the tatters of the flag about his waist. 

“I’ll call you whatever I fucking like,” says the Captain, and watches the man’s lips pull back from his teeth. 

“It does not mean I shall answer,” says the man, with his red lips, red hands, red streaked in his curling blond hair. 

(Some of that hair lies, sodden and trampled, on the stones of the plaza. The man did not so much surrender as collapse.)

“What would you have me call you?” asks the captain. He is killing time, but many things, after all, must die today.

“Citizen,” says the man, lifting a hand to smear blood across the line of a Michelangelo cheekbone, “Never comrade, for that was what _they_ called me, and you are not worthy to stand beside them.”

“Your men are dead,” says the Captain, for they are. Two of them, one died with a pistol in hand, the other a sword that he held like he knew how to use it. (The scar the Captain will carry for the rest of his life, stark across his throat, more than proved he did.)

“My women, too,” says the man, and his smile is beautiful, and terrible, and blinding.

(For what army marches to a capital and expects to be met by women, women with muskets, and knives in their hands, women holding meathooks and shovels and pokers, women in men’s clothes and men’s uniforms who tear the very stones from the streets to rain them down upon the force they see as the invaders-- not many. Not this Captain’s.)

“Last requests,” says the Captain, a drawl rather than a question.

“Call me Communard,” says the man, his head held high, hair spilling down his back like a wave, eyes on fire, “And when you pull the trigger, do not blink.”

\--

They do not call him anything, but on the streets where ten thousand Communards died, not naming him gives him power. They do not name him, and the only name he wore lives on.

 

 

ii. _The Communist League, London, 1848_

“We could kill the Queen,” says Enjolras, and Courfeyrac laughs, high and happy and bloodthirsty, says, “See, my friend, _that_ is a little more like it.”

“Perhaps we could table actual regicide for later,” says Combeferre, dryly, and Courfeyrac laughs again, says, “My cherished ‘Ferre, you say that as if we do not know that you are the most vicious of us all.”

“Nothing clouds a man’s reason like a throne, and it is such a simple solution to merely remove what lies between his shoulders and his crown,” says Combeferre, mildly, and Courfeyrac pulls teasingly on his cravat, raises an eyebrow, waits until Combeferre smiles.

“Europe burns and here we are, cowed and all but betrayed,” says Enjolras, his fingers tightened into a fist. His hair glints accidental red in the low candlelight, and his eyes drift to the lock on Courfeyrac’s door.

Courfeyrac stands from his chair, kneels before Enjolras, and twines his fingers into that hair, presses their foreheads together, his smile turned sharp, sharper than the blade all present know he keeps always in his boot.

“If they come to drag us away, the first wave shall die doing it,” he says, and Enjolras presses his hands, in answer, to the back of his neck, breathes out.

“I love you, _vous_ , as I love the revolution,” says Courfeyrac, his hand reaching out, searching until he finds Combeferre’s hand, “And I would die for the three of you alike, as I believe I shall, in time. But tonight, I do not die. Tonight, I live, and, yes, my beloved friend, Europe burns and London does not, but it is immaterial. If Europe burns, it is the fire that lights our way, and shows us where evil hides in the shadows.”

“There are people here who need us, Enjolras,” says Combeferre, coming to kneel beside Courfeyrac, never letting go of Courfeyrac’s hand, “People who cannot free themselves if we do not remain to help them. Do not look south, but keep your gaze trained here, on us. Do not go where we cannot follow.”

Enjorals presses a slender nail against the jut of Combeferre’s cheekbone, sighs.

“I shall never go where the two of you cannot follow me,” he says, and outside, it begins to rain.

 

 

iii. _The Revolution of 1905_

“It is not enough,” says Courfeyrac, scrabbled black dirt beneath his nails, the welts left by splinters flecked across his face and blood streaming from his nose, and it echoes across the land that these small concessions were a victory-- but not victory enough, hence today.

“Listen to me,” says Combeferre, his hands wound tight in the fabric of Courfeyrac’s shirt, “ _Listen to me_ , comrade. You killed the Grand Duke. They know we are coming for them. All of them. It is not over. We come not for table scraps, but for bread. For the granaries. For _everything_.”

“It is never _enough_ ,” hisses Courfeyrac, stripping off his bloodied clothes, readying to toss them into the fire.

“It may not be, but you are,” says Enjolras, as Combeferre nods his assent, and when Courfeyrac begins to cry, they both move as once to hold him.

 

 

iv. _The Vietnam War, 1968_

“I ain’t dyin’ in no fuckin’ jungle,” says Courfeyrac, spitting chewing tobacco onto the ground, talking just low enough that the officer can’t hear them.

“We should’ve run to Canada, I suppose,” says Combeferre, in the patient terms of someone who has had this conversation many times before.

“Fuck runnin’,” says Courfeyrac, stretching out, the long line of his torso scarred with knife wounds, burn marks, fingernail scratches over mosquito bites, “When they found us, I shoulda blown their fuckin’ heads off.”

“Fuck running,” Enjolras echoes, and Combeferre snorts, says, “Something to share, man?”

“If we ran, you wouldn’t have battlefield medical training,” says Enjolras, “And Mad Dog over here wouldn’t be the best damn scout I’ve ever met in my life. I can assemble an AK blindfolded, I’m scared of goddamn nothin’, and I know I’d die beside the two of you because I’ve already almost done it more times than I can count. They created monsters. It’s up to us what to do with them.”

“You make a fine point,” says Combeferre, his eyes going distant, and Courfeyrac grins, murder in his smile.

“Hell, dude, I hear it,” and says, and they cross themselves as one, mutter, a litany, a chant, a promise, “ _Forgive ‘em, Father, for, as usual, them dumb motherfuckers know not what they do_.”

 

 

v. _Present Day_

“How many copies of _Das Kapital_ does one man need,” says Courfeyrac, but he’s laughing as he says it, and hand clasps hand clasps hand, and inside their wrists, like a secret, is writ in ink, _the tool is not exterminated by the machine_.

“Always, and forever,” says Enjolras, and takes Combeferre’s proffered hand, steps up onto the platform, taps the microphone, profile turned marble before the red flag at his back.


End file.
